Happy Halloween: The 50 Scariest Characters From Literature

To celebrate Halloween, we've put our heads together to compile a list of the 50 most terrifying fictional characters ever (metaphorically - no one has been decapitated, we promise) .

The famous monsters that inspire countless costumes at this time of year - your Draculas and your Frankensteins - are included of course, but did either of them scare their way to number 1?

They're competing with character from all sorts of novels, from the worst creations of 'chick-lit' to seemingly innocuous children's fiction cuddlies. Fear, after all, is a subjective business.

Click through the gallery below - running from 50 to one - to find out what made our top ten.

Literature's Scariest Character

Literature's Scariest Character

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50. Ahab ('Moby Dick', Herman Melville)

Ahab, invented by Herman Melville in his beast of a novel, Moby Dick, is as much of a terrifying monster as the whale at the centre of the novel. Obsessed, angry, and peg-legged, this captain ain't one to mess with.